The Conseil d’Etat, the French administrative Supreme Court, ordered the French Prime Minister to take regulatory measures to indemnify the ISPs (Internet service providers) for the costs incurred when the HADOPI Commission requires them to provide information relating to internet users who have or are likely to have infringed copyright law. A full summary of…

The draft law for the implementation in Greece of Directive 2014/26/EU on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use in the internal market, which was released for public consultation a few days ago, contains a surprise provision, which has the potential to reverse the…

The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has ruled on two cases concerning internet access providers’ obligation to block access to websites providing links to predominantly illegal content. In these two landmark decisions, the BGH has paved the way for website blocking in Germany. Where protected content is offered illegally, directly or via link providers,…

On November 13th the Dutch Supreme Court provided another chapter in the case of ISPs and blocking of the Pirate Bay (hereafter: TPB). It decided that the Court of Appeal had used an incorrect, namely too broad, criterion to judge the effectiveness of a blocking measure. Furthermore, preliminary questions were referred to the ECJ concerning…

The claimants, all members of the Motion Picture Association of America holding copyright in a large number of films and TV programmes, were granted a blocking order preventing the use of Popcorn Time, an open source streaming application which used the BitTorrent protocol to download the claimants’ copyright content. A full summary of this case…

On 1 May 2015 a new, second, ‘anti-piracy’ law [1] will take effect in Russia. This law amends the provisions on preliminary interim blocking injunctions for intermediaries introduced by the first anti-piracy law, which took effect on 1 August 2013. In the opinion of this blogger, the new law, like its predecessor, will barely affect…

On June 24, 2014, the Austrian Supreme Court ruled that the Austrian internet service provider UPC Telekabel Wien GmbH must block access to copyright infringing websites. The Supreme Court noted that, in accordance with the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-314/12, such an injunction leaves its addressee to determine the specific measures to…

The Telecommunications Industry Association (Teleindustrien) in Denmark has recently signed a code of conduct defining the conditions of voluntary website blocking by Danish Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In the event that one ISP is ordered by a court decision or by an order from a regulatory body to block the access to a copyright infringing…

“The underlying key question – can technology solve this problem and, if so, should technology be allowed to determine law? – remains unanswered.” On 2-4 July 2014 Information Influx, the 25th anniversary conference of the Institute for Information Law (IViR) was held in Amsterdam. As part of the conference, on the morning of Thursday, 3…

“A clear intention to solve some of the most disturbing problems in Spanish IP.” On February 14th, the Spanish Government approved a bill to amend the law of intellectual property (TRLPI). The bill is currently in its parliamentary proceedings. It is a “patchwork” reform bill dealing with very different topics, some more necessary than others, and…